Elevators at county administration building in disrepair

Emergency alert buttons inside aging elevators at the county Hall of Administration have been getting a workout lately.

Early this month, two workers at the Treasurer and Tax Collector's Office pressed them frantically when the elevator that was supposed to take them to the fourth floor trapped them and started bobbing up and down for 15 minutes.

"It was very terrifying," said Mary Austin, a cashier. "It was right after bin Laden had been killed, so I didn't know if there was a terrorist attack or an earthquake or what.

"I prayed all that time," she said.

Her companion, senior cashier supervisor Anna Dickey, said instead of going up, the elevator descended to the basement and rose back up to the first floor, lurching the entire time.

"It kept going up and down, up and down, up and down, and we were going, `Oh, my God,"' she said.

Dickey said she found a measure of hope in the fact that they were near the basement, and would not have very far to crash.

An administrative staffer to county Supervisor Don Knabe did not have that luxury.

Last week, she was stuck for more than an hour alone in an elevator on the eighth floor.

The elevators, whose old-fashioned fixtures include seats for long-gone attendants and Formica interior walls, are not the only things that are breaking down inside the Hall of Administration.

Building opened in 1960

The seat of county government, the Hall opened in 1960 and holds the offices of the board, chief executive officer and about half a dozen other departments.

On a typical workday, 2,700 county workers and hundreds of visitors occupy the long, boxy, building that sits on half a block in downtown Los Angeles. Its nondescript style stands in stark contrast to the nearby ultra-modern Walt Disney Concert Hall and Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Jesse Rodriguez, the Hall of Administration's building manager, said it was in "good shape" for a structure that is half a century old.

However, Rodriguez and others are becoming increasingly aware of the hall's middle-age problems. A concerned Board of Supervisors recently directed county Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka to look into the matter.

Ben Saltsman, a deputy to county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, said faulty plumbing recently sent water gushing down from the ceiling of the office next to his.

"It started out just as a few drips, but then within 30 seconds, it started coming down like a pretty heavy rain," he said.

Saltsman called for a security guard and maintenance personnel, and they rushed around, grabbing trash cans and placing them under the leak. They also scrambled to cover the computers and other electronic equipment with plastic.

"It's a good thing I was working late that Friday; otherwise, it might have gone on for a lot longer (the entire weekend) before being discovered," he said.

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich complained that several members of a Chinese delegation visiting his office recently encountered problems with the elevators, too.

"If you have an old car and you put in a new engine, the car ... runs pretty well," he told Fujioka. "What would it cost to put in new equipment in the county elevators?"

Yaroslavsky and Knabe also expressed frustration over the elevators, questioning whether they were safe. They reported problems with plumbing and air-conditioning systems in their offices, as well, and the former asked the Fujioka to "find out what's going on."

Just how bad the problem is depends on who is asked.

Citing reports from an in-house tracking system, building manager Rodriguez said seven people have been stuck in the building's elevators in the past year.

But the cashiers Austin and Dickey, Knabe's staffer and the Chinese delegation visiting Antonovich alone all had mishaps in elevators just this month.

The county's chief deputy executive officer, Patrick Ogawa, later offered a different tally. He said the telephone operator, who responds whenever the elevators' alarm is sounded, recalled 10 incidents in the past year.

Ogawa could not say how many people were involved in those incidents.

The number does not include those who called for help using their cellphones.

Tom Tindall, director of the county's Internal Services Department, said the Hall has 11 elevators, all of which are inspected on weekly and monthly schedules. The state also inspects them annually.

He stressed "The Hall's elevators meet applicable code requirements, as do all ISD-maintained elevators."

Meanwhile, Rodriguez said the recent plumbing failure in the board offices - the one that Saltsman reported - was an "isolated incident."

Tindall explained that water overflowed from heating and air-conditioning water coils while an ISD mechanic was performing routine maintenance work on them. The leak affected not only Yaroslavsky's district offices but also those of Knabe and Mark Ridley-Thomas.

During a recent board meeting, Knabe said the leak was at least the third of its kind on the eighth floor. Another water leak occurred Thursday night, drenching parts of the basement, first and second floors. The next morning, workers returned to their cubicles to find wastebaskets half-full of water that had dripped from the ceiling, and fans and dehumidifiers blowing air onto wet spots in the carpet.

Damaged in earthquake

Safety at the Hall may also be compromised by unrepaired damage from the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

The Hall was subjected to emergency repairs immediately after the quake and deemed "safe for continued occupancy and service."

Additional repairs were supposed to be done over time, but protracted litigation with the building's insurers prevented those from happening.

In 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Agency offered $42 million toward the repairs if the county met certain requirements before a deadline.

Fujioka recommended - and the board agreed - to back out of the "disaster assistance projects" in 2008, citing the county's difficulty in meeting the deadline, and lack of funding.

By his estimate, the county needed $349 million to $399 million for a full "structural code repair and upgrade" to fix the damage that the Northridge Earthquake wrought on the Hall, and FEMA's grant would have covered only 10 to 12 percent of that amount.

The Hall stands in contrast to Los Angeles City Hall, which completed a seismic retrofit in 2001. The latter is about 30 years older and 20 stories taller, yet able to withstand up to a magnitude-8 earthquake.

There has been talk of moving at least some county offices to another location as part of the Grand Avenue Project, an ambitious $3 billion plan to add a park, a museum, hotels, restaurants, retail stores and entertainment venues over 3.6 million square feet downtown.

Questions remain, however, about funding and other issues.

"There has been some discussion of possibly moving out of the Hall as part of the Grand Avenue Project," Rodriguez said. "However, the Board of Supervisors is still reviewing the county's options re: the future of the Hall."

In the meantime, people such as Jason Ortiz continue to work at the Hall, and try not to dwell on safety risks.

The typist/clerk with the Regional Planning Department, who uses the elevators frequently while delivering mail, said, "Over time, with wear and tear, it's only inevitable that certain things will fall apart and sustain damage."

"I doesn't worry me, but it's something that I do keep in the back of my head."